News

A University of Washington seismologist is participating in a White House summit Tuesday that will focus on national earthquake preparedness. The event will be webcast live from 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Pacific time.
Sally Jewell, secretary of the Department of the Interior, and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, are scheduled to give the introductory remarks.

The large, fast-moving mudslide that buried much of Oso, Washington in March 2014 was the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. Since then it’s been revealed that this area has experienced major slides before, but it’s not known how long ago they occurred.
University of Washington geologists analyzed woody debris buried in earlier slides and used radiocarbon dating to map the history of activity at the site.

Make no mistake, the sea is changing. Warming waters are causing some organisms to become more abundant, while undermining others’ ability to fight off disease. Invasive species, overfishing and mutated diseases are all signs and sources of changes to come. Increased acidity, whether from human activities like runoff and carbon emissions or from the upwelling of deeper waters, affects the ability of clams, oysters and fish to form shells and skeletons.

Unlike some natural disasters that we can depend on arriving at our doorstep every year—hurricanes, tornados, fires—earthquakes can be out of sight and out of mind because of their relative infrequency. But when the Big One strikes, it could be a real catastrophe for the Pacific Northwest coast, deeply disrupting the lives and economies throughout the region.
John Vidale, professor of Earth and Space Sciences and chief seismologist for the State of Washington, wants people to be aware of the threats.

Less visible, but perhaps more indelible, signs of changing climate lie in the oceans. A University of Washington researcher in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs argues in the journal Science that people—including world leaders who will gather later this month in Paris for global climate change negotiations—should pay more attention to how climate change’s impacts on ocean and coastal environments affect societies around the globe.

Jake Wood was submitting applications for MBA programs when a magnitude 7.0 struck Haiti in 2010. Having just returned from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was surprised by the similarities between the news footage from Port-au-Prince and what he had seen on the ground, during times of war as a marine. Unable to plug-in with traditional disaster relief organizations, who preferred monetary donations over extra hands, Wood and three friends charted their own path to Haiti and beyond.

The UW’s John Vidale is a man of many titles—professor of Earth and Space Sciences, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and Washington state seismologist. More recently, Vidale helped launch the university’s M9 Project, a cross-disciplinary effort whose goal is to reduce the catastrophic potential effects of a Cascadia megathrust earthquake.
Earlier this year, an article in the New Yorker stirred up panic nationwide over the looming possibility of megaquake along the Cascadia Fault.